5G independent networking commercialization will be realized within this year

In March this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Promoting the Accelerated Development of 5G", which pointed out: Support basic telecommunications enterprises to take 5G independent networking (SA) as the goal, control the scale of non-independent networking (NSA) construction, accelerate network construction in major cities, and gradually extend coverage to key counties and towns with conditions.

Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission clarified for the first time the three aspects of new infrastructure: information, integration and innovative infrastructure, and promoted the development of new infrastructure by accelerating the deployment of 5G networks.

The new infrastructure has accelerated the commercialization of 5G SA networks. The three major operators have accelerated their evolution towards 5G SA, and China Radio and Television 5G has also adopted SA independent networking. It is expected that this year will be the first year for the commercialization of 5G SA networks, and commercialization will definitely be achieved within the year. However, the challenges faced in the commercialization process are not small.

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2020 is the first year for 5G independent networking to be commercialized

It is reported that China Telecom plans to complete the core network pilot of four provincial companies in the second quarter of this year, and strive to have the foundation for 5G SA independent networking commercial network across the country in the third quarter.

Earlier, Li Zhengmao, deputy secretary of the Party Committee and general manager of China Telecom Group Co., Ltd., also said in an interview with the media: "China Telecom plans to achieve the world's first commercial launch of 5G independent networking. The target number of 5G users this year is 60 million to 80 million. We strive to build 300,000 5G base stations this year to cover all cities above the prefecture level in the country."

At the end of February this year, Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, said during a survey that we must persist in treating the construction and development of 5G as a major political task, grasp it in a down-to-earth and detailed manner, grasp the key time nodes, and ensure the progress of 5G independent networking testing to ensure that the 5G network construction is completed on schedule, and that the 5G construction goals remain unchanged and the pace of development continues.

At the beginning of the year, China Mobile successfully completed the industry's first multi-vendor, multi-province and municipal 5G SA field end-to-end service verification and bandwidth testing in Beijing, and successfully implemented the first batch of 5G service verifications based on the real 5G SA field environment, including multi-party video calls, 8K panoramic live broadcasts, and sliced ​​VR.

China Unicom has long stated that it will build a 5G network based on the 5G independent networking (SA) standard, and plans to officially launch it commercially in 2020.

So far, China Unicom has opened 85,000 5G base stations, and it is expected to open 250,000 new stations by the end of September. At the same time, China Unicom will accelerate the construction of SA's target architecture and speed up its evolution.

Thus, the massive centralized procurement of 5G SA core network equipment began. Last week, China Telecom and China Unicom officially completed the joint centralized procurement of wireless main equipment for the 2020 5G SA new construction project. In addition, China Mobile's 5G Phase II wireless main equipment centralized procurement (new construction/capacity expansion) has also been completed. The total centralized procurement of the three major operators has reached 76 billion yuan.

It is understood that China Mobile has completed the centralized procurement of new 5G SA core network equipment in 2020 for the construction of new 5G SA core network elements for 8 regions/31 provincial companies across the country, including virtual layer software, SDN system, NFVO+, and system integration, etc. China Telecom and China Unicom jointly centralized the procurement of wireless main equipment for 5G SA new construction projects in 2020, which is about 250,000 SA wireless main equipment required for 5G construction.

In addition, China Radio and Television's 5G technology route is 700M wide coverage + 4.9G capacity coverage, "low frequency + medium frequency" collaborative networking, and the use of SA independent networking to support full business services.

According to the plan, 5G will be officially put into commercial use in 2020, and individual user services and vertical industry applications will be launched at the same time. In 2021, the 5G network of SARFT will be built into a new type of network with positive energy, wide connectivity, universal access, new applications, good services, and controllable.

Pathfinders face great risks and challenges

Although commercial use is imminent, the process is difficult and faces great challenges:

First, there is capital pressure. In terms of economic benefits, 5G not only faces huge investments, but also faces huge profit pressure; at the same time, time is relatively tight, with less than a year for commercial deployment.

Secondly, in terms of standards, although the R15 standard has been frozen, the relevant protocols still need to be improved. For example: the standard issue of end-to-end network slicing, whether internationally or domestically, the end-to-end work of network slicing needs to be connected in terms of functional architecture and management architecture. At the same time, in the cross-domain process, not only the end-to-end slicing capability standards have not been connected, but also the problem of insufficient automatic deployment capabilities of network slicing. In particular, how are network slicing and existing networks compatible?

Third, under the SA network system, we lack experience in using SDN with complex routing across the entire network and EPN with multiple types of ultra-massive connections. "It is worth noting that a centralized network operation and maintenance system for the entire network is conducive to big data statistics and intelligent analysis of business and network resources, and can automatically generate global optimization and orchestration plans for communication equipment and services, but the processing capacity and processing latency are difficult to meet the requirements. If OSS is set up by region, then each OSS needs to communicate with the central OSS. In addition, how to reasonably set the intensity of edge computing is a problem that needs to be explored in practice." said Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

Fourth, in terms of market business, there is currently no killer business in 2C, and 2B is still in the process of exploration and start-up, and it will take time to scale up.

In addition, Ma Hongbing, general manager of China Unicom's operation and maintenance department, called on the government to give more policy support to 5G. "We should accelerate the opening of public space and public resources for 5G deployment, create a good environment for all to support and build 5G, and jointly assume social responsibilities in electricity, land, entrance fees, towers and other rental fees to achieve the combination of market benefits and social benefits of 5G. At the same time, we should strengthen the combination of industry, academia, research and application, promote the maturity of the 5G industry chain in terms of standards, equipment, terminals, etc., and accelerate the construction and development of 5G."